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Prioritising Life 2.0

I have decided to make a few new changes in the hope of curbing bad habits, and being more productive with the time that I have.

So far, I have changed how I use and access my e-mails. I am still a big fan of e-mails, and it’s been a good while since I wrote a letter from a web browser. These days, I find e-mails time-consuming. Of course, it doesn’t help when you subscribe to over 3-4 DOZEN newsletters. I never read my newsletters word-for-word, but I collate them in my central e-mail account.

The good thing is that I now get to see through the clutter and browse through important correspondence from pending appointments or genuine human beings. The latter part is still rare. Often, us mere mortals are glued to Facebook and “liking” chain posts, or posting selfies on Instagram, or vlogging cat videos on YouTube.

I have also decided to activate Two-Factor Authorisation (2FA) across all of my primary e-mail accounts, which include Google’s Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo. Unfortunately, AOL have yet to implement such security measure, so I shall wait with anticipation, once it filters through as a standard feature. If it ever does. I will give it this year, before deciding to close shop for the sake of security. And yes, I do have multiple e-mail accounts.

I have activated 2FA on other platforms that I take advantage of such as Facebook, Twitter, Apple, PayPal, WordPress, Humble Bundle, and DigitalOcean, which are other services I use on a frequent, if not, daily basis.

2FA in a nutshell allows you to receive an auto-generated code sent to your mobile (or an app that generates a code), as an additional measure to combat brute force hacking, or even when such services are compromised from hacking by the yuff of today. Personally, I find it rather time-consuming, but hey, this is the new norm of everyday living with daily threats of Internet accounts being hijacked by the easy passwords that we set. Here’s hoping that some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley have the talent and skills to keep their customers safe.

I have opted to receive notification of e-mails on my mobile. Previously, I used a web browser extension, which allowed me a single-click access to any e-mail account.

I find the whole 2FA a little ironic in one sense. If you lose your phone, you are screwed! Fortunately, I can lock my Android phone remotely and even erase the data off my phone. I have yet to contemplate a possible scenario if you lose your phone whilst hill walking in the Scottish Highlands, and of course, you don’t get Internet access in such remote places on earth. For my tablet, I have enabled the “Find My iPad” feature, which should allow me to locate and lock my iPad, but also erase my data remotely.

So yeah, 4 mobile apps to access e-mails, which now require an extra glance over my mobile to enter numerical codes, simply to be “secure” in the realm of the internet and technology. I have decided to go gung-ho with a view of understanding the latest trends in technology.

In addition, I am spending less time browsing through my e-mails, as it’s more cumbersome to access them with the extra clicks and inconvenience of extra apps, but I am thankful for the extra security measures that allows users to be proactive and buckle up.

Now the challenge is to use the time wisely that I have gained from previously wasting on others things.